What's the difference between MSN Messenger, Windows Messenger, and Windows Messenger?

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I had this very problem, and was going to wait until you got your reply..but I found an answer, and thought I would pass it on to you.

I have zone alarm installed and had to changed my settings to allow MSN 6.1 to run.

You may want to change your firewall settings. It was frustrating, but it works fine now.

is there any way to recover last session on windows messenger--its not been saved--this is a security issue--i think one of my employees is sending info via messenger

Not that I am aware of. If the MSN Messenger session is still open - i.e. the application hasn't been closed then it may still be in the window, and one could copy/paste. But if archiving hasn't been turned on then I'm unaware of any way to recover.

Leo

The latest version of MSN Messenger is so simular to Windows Messeger, but Windows Messenger has a "professional look", so why don't Microsoft just have one messanger program which you can give it skins so you can have the prefessional look or the more comfortable 'home' msn look!

i am useing windows messenger so you are saying that i can receive messages from msn messenger too?

That is supposed to work, yes :-).

Leo

Leo, Is Windows Messenger 5.0 just an update to 4.7? My company is completely XP and we use 4.7 on all systems. When you do a Windows Update or go to XP's site to download the latest Messenger, it appears to be 4.7 still. However, there is this 5.0 floating around but I was afraid to try it on systems as I thought it might be the Exchange Server version only. Just want to make sure.

Thanks

First, you're quite right. 5.0 will supposedly still work with normal .NET messaging that 4.7 and MSN messenger use, but it's targetted at the exchange server / corporate market.

As if there weren't enough messengers around already.

http://ask-leo.com/d-messenger5 is MS's info page on 5.0.

Unless you have a specific reason, I'd stick with 4.7.

Leo

Leo--Thanks so much for this site and clearing up this confusion. This has been bugging me for a while and you cleared up a lot of my questions with Messenger, Messenger and Messenger. I have shut off Messenger Service and only have Windows Messenger 4.7 installed as a default browser.

One item of note, my friend and I always communicated with MSN Messenger 6.0 until I bought a new computer with XP as a platform and THEN we could no longer use MSN Messenger 6.0 as we were advised (popup window) that my friend had to upgrade to XP in order to connect. We shifted to YAHOO for months before he bought a new computer with XP and now we can use MSN with no problems.

Strange that XP and MSN Messenger are not backwards compatible to lesser platforms. Real strange!

Thanks again,
Al in Ottawa Canada

You sure that's not backwards? MSN Messenger 6.0 interoperates just fine with other messengers. Windows messenger 4.7 may or may not. Perhaps you were using an advanced feature like voice or video? I could see compatability issues there, but simple chatting should work fine regardless of platform.

Whatever, it sounds like you're working, which is great :-).

Leo

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